While lunching, our goat-herd guide was pointing out rock-crannies where wolves, from lack of brushwood, used to lie up by day, and complaining that he could not keep poultry by reason of the marten-cats. Suddenly he broke out in shrill and altered tones: “Tell me, Caballero,” he exclaimed, “tell me why you come here from lands afar to suffer discomfort and hardship and to undergo all these labours—why do you do this?” We endeavoured to explain. “You see, Gregorio, that God created all manner of animals different one from another. So also He created mankind in many different races—all brothers, yet differing as brothers do. You Spanish belong to the Latin race. You have many fine qualities, some of which we lack. But you rather concern yourselves with material things and disregard platonic study. We of British race are imbued with desire to learn all that can be traced of Nature and her ways. Some examine the earth itself, its formations and transformations; others the birds or the beasts. There are those who devote their lives to studying the beetles and ants, even the mosquitoes. Now in Spain you find none who are interested in such matters.”
Gregorio sat silent and seemed impressed; but Caraballo interjected: “Why waste time? These people are not concerned (entrometidos) in such matters.” True; but Gregorio had appeared interested and intelligent? “Si! but when folk spent lonely lives among the mountains and never see but a petty hill-village once or twice a year, then intelligence goes to sleep (se pone dormido).” Certainly five minutes later they were both hammering away again at the customary small-talk of the by-ways.
A bird of the wild woods, never seen in towns; builds in foundations of kites’ and eagles’ nests. Note that Temminck’s Latin seems a bit “rocky.” The specific name might be hispanicus, or perhaps hispaniensis, but hispaniolensis never. That adjective must date from a newer era and from a world then unknown.]
CHAPTER XXXII
VALENCIA
TWO NOTABLE WILDFOWL RESORTS
(1) The Albufera
FOR centuries this marine lagoon—the largest sheet of water in Spain—has, along with the forests and wastes that formerly adjoined it, been a stronghold of wild animal-life. As early as the thirteenth century King James I., after wresting the Kingdom of Valencia from the Moors, and dividing its castles and estates among his nobles and generals, selected, with shrewd appreciation, the Albufera for his personal share of the spoils of war. For not only did the great lake with its wild appanages form a truly regal hunting-domain, but the broad lands intervening between the Grao of Valencia, Cullera, and the lake-shores possessed a fabled fertility.
For six centuries the lands and waters of Albufera belonged to the Spanish Crown. Though by edict in A.D. 1250 James I. granted free public rights of fishing (reserving, however, one-fifth of the catch for royal use), yet both he and succeeding monarchs ever continued to extend and improve the amenities of the Crown Patrimony.
In State-papers of James I.‘s time, where reference is made to the game, there are expressly specified: “Deer, wild-boar, ibex, francolins, partridges, hares, rabbits, otters, and wildfowl, besides the wealth of fish” in the lake itself. Again, more than four centuries later, an edict of October 31, 1671, expressly specified among resident game, “deer, boar, ibex, and francolin.” Now the francolin, although to-day extinct in Spain, is known to have existed on the Mediterranean till quite within modern times, and the other animals named might well have abounded in the wild forests of those days. But the specific mention of ibex (twice, with an interval of 400 years) appeared inexplicable; for it was inconceivable that a wild-goat should ever have occupied the low-lying dehesas of Albufera. The discovery of the actual existence of ibex in the sierras of Valencia, however (as recorded above, p. 142), explains the paradox and also throws light on the breadth of mediæval ideas in hunting-boundaries; since the Sierra Martés lies some forty miles inland of Albufera.